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Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.

For
the past generation, one of the hottest topics among pastors and church
leaders has been church growth. “Pastor, Pastor, quite contrary, how
does your garden grow?” Theories abound and models for 'doing church'
come and go like teenage fashion fads. But in the middle of all this
discussion and strategy a few very practical questions remain: "How
does God intend his church to grow? What are the means by which the
gospel of Jesus is spread? What is the job of the average Christian?
How should pastors lead in this endeavor?" One attempt to answer these
questions should be very familiar. For lack of a better name, I will
call it the 'Church Growth' paradigm. Here are a few of this paradigm's
basic assumptions:

A simple vision - bring the gospel of salvation in Jesus to the entire world by any means necessary.

Ethnic groups - generational groups, special needs
groups, etc. are identified, studied, targeted, and advanced upon with
this gospel in hopes that they will be assimilated into the Kingdom and
a church.

Massive amounts of funding - personnel, strategy, planning, and leadership are necessary to pull off this enormous undertaking.

One of Church Growth's primary tools is to coax people into a special
place once a week where God is the focus of the entire event
(traditionally, a service on Sunday morning). The idea is that if
people will think about God for a few hours on Sunday, maybe they'll
also consider him the other 166 hours during the week. All manner of
resources are expended to make those few precious hours as efficient
and relevant as possible. Countless programs are concocted to try and
connect people with God at other times. The amount of blood, sweat,
prayer, and tears expended in this paradigm is extraordinary.

As a reward for all that effort, Church Growth has been extremely
successful. The gospel has reached more corners of the world than ever
thought possible in the last 100 years. But without going into the
problems associated with Church Growth, let me propose another way to
answer those fundamental questions. Let’s assume that you’ve tried
Church Growth and found it wanting. Or, you’ve simply run out of silver
bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row. This next
paradigm I would like to describe is much less popular and remains
largely untried in North America. Again, for lack of a better name, I
will call it the 'Subversive Community'.

'Subversive' is an odd word to associate with Christian ministry, but
that is only because of its uses in recent world history. Webster's
defines 'subvert', "to overturn or overthrow from the foundation." It's
origin is Latin, "subvertere, literally, to turn from beneath." Eugene
Peterson has a great description of this paradigm's assumptions:

"Three things are implicit in subversion. One, the status quo is wrong
and must be overthrown if the world is going to be livable. It is so
deeply wrong that repair work is futile. The world is, in the word
insurance agents use to designate our wrecked cars, totaled.

Two, there is another world aborning that is livable. Its reality is no
chimera (illusion). It is in existence, though not visible. Its
character is known. The subversive does not operate out of a utopian
dream but out of a conviction of the nature of the real world.

Three, the usual means by which one kingdom is thrown out and another
put in its place - military force or democratic elections - are not
available. If we have neither a preponderance of power nor a majority
of votes, we begin searching for other ways to effect change. We
discover the methods of subversion. We find and welcome allies."

The Subversive Community's mission is not to bring the kingdom of God
from without; it is to release the kingdom of God from within.
Subversives do not "reach outside people and encourage them to come
in." Subversives live and do their work ‘undercover’ where the world
lives and breathes. Their goal is not escapism (trying to build a
Christian utopia), but to show people how they can lay hold of life as
God intended, in his Kingdom.

The Subversive Community understands that the world and its ways are
false. It is constantly interacting with people at work, in the grocery
store, or at home who are all in the prison of this world's system.
These prisoners are quite happy in their assumed reality (especially
the ones who have amassed quite a kingdom of wealth). But some secretly
ask the question, "Is this really all there is to life?" The Subversive
Community’s answer is not merely to inform them about the Kingdom, but
to invite them to become participants in a whole new reality. The
training program will be unique and cannot be rushed or broken down
into a few 'principles' that are easy to swallow. Remember, the kingdom
of God deals with every aspect of our lives. This training might just
take a lifetime.

The chief aim of the Subversive Community is to train other
subversives, which is really what the Great Commission was all about.
So what are our tools? Where do we begin in this training? How do we
train others? Again I'll reference Peterson from "The Contemplative
Pastor":

"Prayer and parable are the stock-in-trade tools of the subversive
pastor. The quiet (or noisy) closet life of prayer enters into
partnership with the Spirit that strives still with every human heart,
a wrestling match in holiness. And parables are the
consciousness-altering words that slip past falsifying platitude and
invade the human spirit with Christ-truth.”

Andrew Jones used to have on his website this tag line: “One who tells
stories and throws parties.” Combine that statement with Peterson’s and
you get the closest thing to a strategy for church planting available.
I call it the “Three-P’s of Church Planting” – Prayer, Parables, and
Parties.

Prayer

In the absence of building programs, 45-minute sermons three times a
week, and an “outreach ministry,” there is prayer. The “wrestling
match” to which Peterson refers is not the hand-wringing sessions most
prayer meetings resemble. “Oh God, our culture is so bad. Why are
people not coming to our church service anymore? Please bless our next
outreach program so we can advance your kingdom.” Instead of asking God
to bless our programs, we should be trying to bless His. This takes a
willingness to do two things: ask and wait. Our community has grown
through having times of prayer that include more silence than prayer.
We are trying to learn corporately the ancient (and anti-Western)
discipline of solitude and silence. As we’ve grown in our ability to
hear God’s voice, we’ve found a few simple prayers that have been
helpful:

“God, what have you created us to be in our community?”“How can we
represent your Kingdom in our jobs, families, circles of friends, and
neighborhoods?”

“Make us aware of your rule and reign today in every situation.”

“Lead us to men and women of peace that will provide contact with the
world in places where your Spirit is working.” (See Luke 10)

Parables

The Subversive Community is a living story. It sees itself as a
footnote to Chapter Three in the Story of God and His People.
Simultaneously we are living within the Larger Story, the story of our
faith community, and our individual stories. This has always been so,
but the church has kept these stories stored away on a dusty shelf and
tried to give the world the Cliff Notes instead. It’s time to take the
musty books down and learn the art of storytelling again.

Jesus understood the deeply subversive nature of stories. He used
parables like ticking time bombs of truth implanted in his hearer’s
minds. They would sit there unprotected, challenging assumptions and
coaxing the soul to establish a new foundation for life. N.T. Wright
explains:

“When Jesus announced the kingdom, the stories he told functioned like
dramatic plays in search of actors. His hearers were invited to
audition for parts in the kingdom. They had been eager for God’s drama
to be staged and were waiting to find out what they would have to do
when he did so. Now they were to discover. They were to become
kingdom-people themselves.”

The Subversive Community can use parable in many different ways. Our
community has utilized the Web to tell our story on a global and local
stage. The recent web-logging craze (www.blogger.com) has enabled us to
keep our story documented real-time and from the point of view of each
participant. Music, art, and poetry allow the community to present the
story in fresh, creative ways. Even something benign like how you
design your house can communicate truth about the Kingdom. Parable is
in its nature a creative act so it is most effective when you decide to
be original and invite the Holy Spirit to tell God’s story through your
life. Don’t just use someone else’s stories; come up with your own!

Parties

"People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take
their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 13:29) Jesus
often used the party or feast to represent the kingdom of God. His
first miracle was performed at a wedding reception, he feasted with his
brand new followers Levi and Zacchaeus, and his most famous parable
ended with a huge party for a prodigal son. Often, Christians think
true spirituality looks more like fasting than it does feasting. But
Jesus responds, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the
groom?” (Luke 5:34) The Subversive Community knows how to party.

Our community has organized a few parties, which we call Kingdom
Feasts. We invite friends, family, co-workers, people from other
churches, and anyone else who wants to come. The last one was held at
the beach where we cooked a ton of burgers and played volleyball in
perfect South Florida weather. Another time we fried up a bunch of
shrimp and worshipped into the night. But each time, our focus as
participants is to demonstrate to ourselves and our guests that the
kingdom of God is here.

The Subversive Community would never be caught trying to coax the world
into a church building. It believes the church (which is you and me)
exists primarily out in the world just being itself. But we are not
passive observers of a world going to hell. We are here to overthrow
the world’s assumptions about life and our hope for the future.
Peterson now completes our job description:

“This is our primary work in the real world. But we need continual
convincing. The people whom we are praying and among whom we are
telling parables are seduced into supposing that their money and
ambition are making the world turn on its axis. There are so many of
them and so few of us, making it difficult to maintain our convictions.
It is easy to be seduced along with them.

Words are the real work. Prayer words with God, parable words with men
and women. The behind-the-scenes work of creativity by word and
sacrament, by parable and prayer, subverts the seduced world. The
pastor's real work is what Ivan Illich calls "shadow work" - the work
nobody gets paid for and few notice but that makes a world of
salvation: meaning and value and purpose, a world of love and hope and
faith - in short, the kingdom of God.”